Posted
by
Soulskill
on Friday February 26, 2010 @01:41AM
from the too-much-time-on-your-hands dept.

GamePolitics has an article about a research paper issued by the AU government's Institute of Criminology titled "Crime Risks of Three-Dimensional Virtual Environments." The paper discusses the legal questions raised by game worlds and avatars, ranging from regulation of in-game currency to a report of virtual rape.
"A person controlling an avatar that is unexpectedly raped or assaulted might experience the physical reaction of 'freezing,' or the associated shock, distrust and loss of confidence in using [3D virtual environments]. While civil redress for psychological harm is conceivable, the 'disembodied' character of such an incident would invariably bar liability for any crime against the person. However, Australian federal criminal law imposes a maximum penalty of three years imprisonment for using an internet carriage service to 'menace, harass or cause offence' to another user. Further, US and Australian laws ban simulated or actual depictions of child abuse and pornography. Therefore, any representations of child avatars involved in virtual sexual activity, torture or physical abuse are prohibited, regardless of whether the real-world user is an adult or child."

In other news properties in the game of monopoly are to be rent controlled.Infractions shall be a matter for civil court and anyone who actually does manage to build a monopoly shall be subject to unfair trading practices legislation.

You'd think the Ozzies, that are usually portrayed as a rough and tough bunch, are being such a bunch of limp wristed mamby pambies when it comes to all this online stuff. Would like to hear what the Ozzies think of their fascist government on this subject.

you cant know too many aussies who can still lay claim to being properly aussie. most with technical knowledge who still live in Oz are disgusted at what the government is trying to do regarding the internet and technology..

Where the hell did you get that idea? Most of us ignore them as best we can. This is summed up by the popular saying "Don't vote, it only encourages the bastards." Those that aren't ignoring them are taking the piss out of them [youtube.com].

Lots of politicians do this stuff. Turn full-force against some virtual, pointless "cause" that won't bring any real opposition, so it's easy, yet scares lots of voters with silly issues, so pleases them that "someone is doing something". It's the same as railing againt immigrants, movie or tv violence, or "crime", "communists", or "terrorists". There will be no real useful work done for anyone, but will get attention and votes, and since the opposition is voiceless, powerless, very distant or inexistent

If I was a politician I'd do the exact opposite, and work to eliminate bad laws and then brag about it: "Good news! The law that would have arrested you for kissing a black person (or vice-versa white person) no longer exists. I killed it." Or: "You can put $100 more in your bank account this year. The War of 1898 tax has finally been repealed." Or: "You no longer need fear being arrested because you grow a natural plant in your backyard. The marijuana prohibition has been lifted, although it will

The issue of mandatory filters in Oz is a good cop, bad cop routine to neuter religious zealots who occasionally hold the balance of power in the senate. The endless inquiries are indeed intended to give the impression of "doing something". Thes inquiries have been going on now for at least a decade regardless of who is in power and IMHO will never come into force. The current independent senator who's votes this legislation was intended to buy has gone cold on the idea since his own anti-abortion sponsers

I'm an Aussie and most of the people I know dislike the current government and are against laws such as

Australian federal criminal law imposes a maximum penalty of three years imprisonment for using an internet carriage service to 'menace, harass or cause offence' to another user.

We think that ruling cartoon depictions of child pornography illegal is plain stupid, and are against Internet filtering.
Our far left Labor government completely ignores the people (ETS, NBN anyone?), and instead tries to protect them against their will or by the will of a small minority. They also put too much weight on the voice of parents who think that the protection of their children supersedes the right of society's freedom, when if they didn't they would loose their precious votes in our extremely tight federal elections.
It's in shambles and is completely bs.

our government here in australia is completely clueless in areas of technology, but i still think a lot of the general population just don't care.. anyway hopefully they get kicked out in next election (please! some good alternatives!)...and stop wasting our money on the completely pointless NBN
hopefully i didn't offend anyone, hate to go to prison for this comment..
on 2nd thoughts they're probably more likely to apply a filter excluding all content with keywords "government", "australia" and "waste"

I'm for a one-law constitution. Absolutely no violence against human beings. Violence against other things is also discouraged, but less so. Everything else is legal. Society will have to learn to define for itself what is violence, what is human, and not. That debate is not simplistic and bite-sized for the attention-grabbing media, politicians, or the poor people attempting to learn something from the entertainment-gossip-*news*. You will need some scholars. And engaging in violence won't get you sent

The world resulting from your 'one law' would be brutally violent. The only way you could enforce the 'one law' would be with police--and there would be a lot of pissed off people angry because somebody took their stuff (legally, in a 'one law' world). You'd need taxes to pay the police--but you couldn't enforce the tax collection law (in a 'one law' world). Violence would go unchecked.

In SL:It used to be possible to trick an avatar to "consent" to being animated. Longer ago... there was this nasty objectcalled a "skull fucker" that would allow the assailant to simulate a "Skull Fuck" without the victim's consent.

There are still WAY more options for wanna-be greifers in SL than any other platform on the market. Many more have been nerfed. And a huge number of accounts and even entire groups have been banned over the years.

Without reading TFA, the usual citation for virtual rape is a case from years and years ago on a text-based game called LambdaMOO. A particularly asinine user wrote a puppet that was, yes, used to rape people. Exactly how and why people manage to associate with MU* characters so strongly that they can actually be emotionally harmed by this sort of thing is beyond me, and I've spent years on them!

I agree - and it's an insult to people who have experience such horrific crimes.

A virtual crime is a crime that happens in a virtual envirnoment - e.g., fraud. Things like harrassment can also constitute crimes, but the crime is still harrassment, and not "rape". This is nothing new - did people refer to dodgy phone callers as "virtual rapists"?

A depiction of a crime is not a virtual crime. By that logic, films show "virtual murders", and when they media report on crimes, they should also be guilty of commi

It all depends on how the rape procedes really. If you want your faith in humanity thoroughly but gently violated there's WoW. If you want your star wars related hopes and dreams mercilessly skullfucked there's SWG.

Or if you want to just skip the gameplay and get straight to plain old fashioned sexual raping, you can sample half the programs coming from Japan.

My first experience of Second Life involved my avatar being dryhumped by some 'naked perv' avatar on noob island. The person even had modeled a penis for their avatar oh and a bowler hat. It was very odd. Sad really.

Any virtual environment or even chat systems support virtual rape by way of emotes

No, no they don't. There's a reason why you can be sued for sexual harassment at work for saying something obscene but you can't be sued for rape for something you say. Words can be hurtful, but they can't be rape.

So maybe reprehensible in.au and.us, but what if the victim is there but the perp is in some other country where the legislator thinks rape is not so bad in First Life and/or doesn't even have Internet ?

The PROTECT Act includes prohibitions against illustrations depicting child pornography, including computer-generated illustrations, also known as virtual child pornography.[1][2][4] Provisions against virtual child pornography in the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996 had been ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2002. However, the provisions of the Protect Act are distinct, since they establish the requirement of showing obscenity as defined by the Miller Test, which was not an element of the 1996 law.

Yes, quite. See "PROTECT Act" (2003):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PROTECT_Act_of_2003 [wikipedia.org]
The short version is obscenity can, as always, be prosecuted, and the PROTECT Act remedied the missing element in CPPA, which was the law struck down in Ashcroft, thus once again allowing the prosecution of virtual child pornography found to be obscene.

That's what I meant by "not quite." The law they passed afterward contains the "lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value" phrase oft found in obscenity laws, which makes it almost impossible to prosecute someone.

What if I'm playing an online game and someone attacks and kills my character ? Is that against the law too ? Does it matter that death is not permanent in this particular virtual world ? What if death is a normal part of this particular virtual world (WoW PVP servers for instance)

What if I have a virtual house in (say) Second Life and someone enters without asking or enters through the window ? Is that virtual break and enter ? What if they steal my stuff ? I have then suf

Well, virtual currency is considered equal to real currency [slashdot.org] in South Korea, and a man was arrested [slashdot.org] for virtual robbery in Britain. A Dutch Court [slashdot.org] punished a couple of teenage thieves as well. If I dug deeper I'm sure I could find more stories.

On a WoW server, a group of mates and myself played highwaymen. One of us would be a scantily clad Dranei, and the others would be hidden near by. Stand and deliver! d:

I'm guessing they chose to cite rape and child ponography because they are emotional issues that people generally hold strong opinions about in the real world.

With current technology, it is unlikely (but not impossible) that you would find yourself in a situation where you would be as emotionally invested in your avatar where an attack would be personally damaging on an emotional level. As technology improves and people associate more closely with their online representation, it increases the likelyhood tha

I imagine you are absolutely correct about people having strong emotional reactions to rape and child pornography. In fact, much more so than murder, the mere mention of the other two crimes can cause an emotional reaction, whereas for most people, the murder needs to be of somebody they know to have the same level of emotional reaction.

On the other hand, within some games, death is a normal part of the game. In FPS style games, murder is the entire point. In this sense, our expectations are different in

Perhaps those who do commit crimes such as theft, murder, rape in games should do time for their crimes. But as these are virtual crimes, it should be the avatar, not the real person who does the time, and they should do so in a virtual prison. If the game designer doesn't have a justice system built into their game, and it bothers you that crimes go unpunished, then you are free not to play their game and to design your own.